1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed toward the field of web sites, and more particularly toward designing, creating, and maintaining web sites.
2. Art Background
Generally, a web site is a collection of text and images configured for presentation in a predetermined way. A web site may be published by a single person or published by a group of people. A company or organization is an example of a group of people that publish a web site. For example, a company may have a web site for use by its customers (e.g., sale of products), and a company may have a web site for internal use (i.e., Intranet). Typically, web sites published by a group are created and maintained through a collaborative effort. For example, a company that sells hi-tech gadgets may include, on its web site, material that describes and shows uses for the hi-tech gadgets as well as content that describes the basic technology of the hi-tech gadgets. The material that discloses uses of the hi-tech gadgets may be submitted by the company""s marketing department, whereas the content that describes the basic technology of the gadgets may be submitted by the company""s engineering department. Thus, it is typical to assemble content for a web site from multiple sources when creating and maintaining a web site.
Typically, to create a web site, the person, referred to as the content contributor, submits the content (e.g., files and images) to the web site administrator for publication. The web site administrator assumes the role of both constructing the web site and maintaining the implementation of the web site. The task of constructing the web site includes using HTML to link the files and images. The task of maintaining the implementation of the web site includes ensuring proper operation of the host computer, such as a web server, as well as maintaining up to date back ups of the web site. The content contributor may not be technical and may not have any knowledge of HTML. Thus, the content contributors rely on the web site administrators to publish the content.
One problem associated with this traditional approach is that funneling all the content for publication through the site administrator creates a bottleneck. For example, if a web site has multiple content contributors, all of the content contributors must funnel the content through the web site administrator prior to publishing the content. Also, this approach places all of the responsibility of approving publication of content on the web site administrator when the web site administrator may have little or no knowledge of the content. Furthermore, under this approach, there is no single responsible person for ensuring that the content is up to date and accurate.
With the increased popularity of the Internet and corporate Intranets, there is an increased demand for tools that aid in the creation and maintenance of web sites. Accordingly, it is desirable to generate a web site creation and maintenance tool that permits non-technical people to publish content on a web site. It is also desirable to generate a web site creation and maintenance tool that apportions responsibility for web site creation and maintenance task to the most appropriate individuals.
A self service web site system permits content contributors to publish content without knowledge of HTML. The web site is implemented at a central repository, such as a web server. In one embodiment, the physical implementation of the web site resides on a database. The self service system displays to users, on the users"" computers, one or more panels. The panels contain input fields to permit the users to submit content and web site components for publication on the web site. In one embodiment, the self service system permits a content contributor to add an item, add an item to a folder, associate an item with a perspective, and classify the item in a category. The user, through use of only a web browser running on the user computer, transmits the parameter to the central repository. In response, the web site is updated at the central repository in accordance with the parameter. The web site system also permits, through a self service implementation, administration and management of the web site.